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British troops have handed over control of their last base in Afghanistan to Afghan troops

PM David Cameron has launched plans for a £1m national memorial to more than 220,000 service personnel who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says the memorial will honour "the contribution of our generation" and has tasked ex-chief of the defence staff Lord Stirrup with raising the funds.

The plan is to have the central London memorial ready by 2016, a decade after British troops first entered Helmand.

Some 632 British troops have died in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As our troops come home from Afghanistan I want us to begin erecting a new national memorial to the contribution made both there and in Iraq," Mr Cameron wrote in the Sun on Sunday.

He added: "In doing so we can be sure that long after we are gone, the contribution of our generation will be honoured with a permanent place in our national consciousness alongside the sacrifices of our past."

News of the plan comes on Remembrance Sunday, with services being held across the UK to commemorate fallen servicemen and women on the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.